“So he’s a shadow,” Aern said. “What you told us before, about the feelings you were getting from him …” He crouched to her level, bracing an elbow on his knee. “Ellin said something while you were gone; something about the way he almost seemed to drive fear into her.”
Brianna nodded. “I think he was trying to give me direction. But Emily and I, we’re immune to sway.” It was what made them special, what allowed them to fight Morgan. Why the prophecy had chosen them. And that wasn’t all lies, was it? At least some part of the prophecy was coming true, with or without the shadows’ help. “It was like I could feel him try to push me, like somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew what he wanted me to do. But I didn’t have to.”
Aern exchanged a glance with Emily, whose arms went suddenly slack at the loss of tension.
“What?” Brianna asked. “What is it?”
“I thought it was the bond,” Emily said. “It just… it felt like the bond.”
“It had been getting stronger,” Aern explained. “And then, after you repaired new connections”—he shrugged—“it just feels like it’s moving through the bond. Emily and I, we can sense what the other is feeling.”
“It’s like you said,” Emily added, “I know what he wants, but I don’t have to do it.”
Logan leaned forward. “He came alone, and with Morgan’s men he took a command position. He isn’t hiding, this is something else. If they’re searching for Brianna, they’ve had her in their possession twice that we know of and they’ve not acted on it. They’re holding Brendan, questioning him. Whatever this is, whatever they’re waiting on, they’re afraid of the outcome.”
Aern nodded. “Because the shadows wouldn’t have planted Brianna and Emily here if they were both immune to the sway, if they couldn’t control them.”
Brianna went still, remembering the dark-haired man’s questions. Did you see the end, Brianna? Do you know how it all comes out? “Or because they have their own prophets,” she breathed. “Because they can see something I can’t.”
Logan’s arm went around her waist. “Then why aren’t they interested in Aern or Morgan?” he said. “Why Brendan? What does he know that they don’t?”
Emily’s foot twitched as she fought the urge to resume pacing. “Could be an assumption. Brianna was with Brendan longest.” She gestured toward Aern. “While we were running across the city, she was at the Division. Maybe they don’t have as many spies as we think, maybe their information is outdated?”
Aern ran a palm over his chest, considering. “This Jackson was with Morgan the whole time. He could have gathered every scrap of intel with his sway. Anything they had.”
Was he a spy, working for the men in her visions? “Then why would he warn us?” Brianna drew her jacket up tighter, though the room was warm. “What would he have to gain if he was reporting to them?”
A shadow passed over Aern’s face, a memory of the comrades he’d lost to Morgan’s rule. “Not everyone has the option to choose, Brianna.”
And there was that word again. Choice. She straightened. “Okay, so what’s left? They want us because we can’t be affected by the sway?”
“Maybe that’s what we’re missing,” Logan said. His gaze shot to Aern’s. “Morgan was able to use his power on a shadow, to control her.”
Emily looked sick. “That’s right. Even before she’d given him the extra control.” Her hand dug into the material at her waist, wrapping around the handle of her blade. “He turned our mother, Brianna. Used her.”
But Brianna wouldn’t believe those men were afraid. Not after the visions she’d seen. Not after the images of death and war. “He said she tricked him.” Her eyes met Emily’s, confessing all of the doubt and worry she’d been pressing back. “He said she was smarter than they gave her credit for, and she’d deceived them all.”
Aern’s focus was still on Logan, and Brianna realized she’d missed the implication. “You mean that’s why they’re staying clear of Aern and Morgan?” Because they could turn a shadow with their sway. They were the only ones strong enough among the Seven; only the pair of them left that were of the dragon line.
The man’s warning was back, his promise that they’d saved her, that she and Emily were somehow comparable to Morgan, to Aern. That there was something special enough about the two of them to cause a disruption, to put their lives and the lives of their family in danger. “It’s the prophecy,” she said. “They want us because we can destroy their power. And because we can create it.” Her gaze came up to meet Aern. “In you.”
In the Seven.
Emily’s grip came free of her blade. “She tricked them, Brianna. She put us here to hide us.” She paused, taking a breath, and there was no question it was shrouded in relief. “From them. From the shadows.” Not from the Seven. Not from Aern and Logan. She stared at Brianna. “So what do we do now?”